The Makioka Sisters

Book Description:

Vintage Japanese Classics - five masterpieces of Japanese fiction in gorgeous new gift editions - following on from the success of Vintage Russian Classics and European Classics, these are covetable new editions of the best Japanese writers on the Vintage list

In the years leading up to the Second World War, four sisters live in dilapidated houses in Osaka and Ashiya, and each navigate their own complex, personal relationship to the fading lustre of the Makioka family name. Rich with breathtaking descriptions of ancient customs and an ever-changing natural world, Junichiro Tanizaki evokes in loving detail a long-lost way of life even as it withers under the harsh glare of modernity.

About the Author

Junichiro Tanizaki was born in 1886 in Tokyo, where his family owned a printing establishment. He studied Japanese literature at Tokyo Imperial University, and his first published work, a one-act play, appeared in 1910 in a literary magazine he helped to found.

Tanizaki lived in the cosmopolitan Tokyo area until the earthquake of 1923, when he moved to the gentler and more cultivated Kyoto-Osaka region, the scene of The Makioka Sisters. There he became absorbed in the Japanese past and abandoned his superficial Westernisation. All his most important works were written after 1923, among them Naomi (1924), Some Prefer Nettles (1929), Arrowroot (1931), Ashikari (1932), A Portrait of Shunkin (1932), The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi (1935), several modern versions of The Tale of Genji (1941, 1954 and 1965), The Makioka Sisters, Captain Shigemoto's Mother (1949), The Key (1956) and Diary of a Mad Old Man (1961).

By 1930 Tanizaki had gained such renown that an edition of his complete works was published, and he was awarded an Imperial Award for Cultural Merit in 1949. In 1965 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the first Japanese to receive this honour. Tanizaki died in 1965.

Find out more at Angus & Robertson